Got a job and visit to Royal Amouries

I've now got a little less time for sewing as I have a job! This is temporary and could lead to a permanent job, which I will have to think about. It's in Leeds city centre, so I have to leave the car at home and DH gives me a lift to the local station and I join all the other commuters at the ridiculously early hour of 7.30 am! He does a day's work and still has time to collect me from the station in the evening so it's a long day. But I should be grateful - it is work - I was hoping for a better work/life balance may be that will come later.

This Saturday, after much mucking about in the afternoon we went to the Royal Armouries in Leeds. DH has been wanting to visit here for a while. It is big and really want a whole day here, but this is what we've managed to see while here.

This wonderful staircase which has swords, pistols, daggers and armour on the inside of the staircase. The pic above shows up to the skylight at the top.

This pic is taken from the fourth floor looking out to one of the porthole windows. There are more on the outside of the staircase.

In the oriental collection was this Indian elephant with its amour. There are little flower and elephant patterns in the squares of the armour.

And this pic shows the front.

This pic shows a replica of a Chinese soldier with his horse.

The Royal Armouries are in a development called Clarence Dock which has a canal basin off the Calder and Aire Canal which runs through Leeds and there were windows in the museum to get views across the city. As I said it does need quite a bit of time to see all of the museum so a chance to go again. We'd also been to Pizza Express there, so I was taken for a meal for Valentines Day, though it was hardly romantic!

I hope that tomorrow I'll have a chance to stitch so I may have something of a sewing nature to show then.

Ouch!

After the weekend in Richmond, I got in the car awkwardly and have got a bad back, ouch! My lower back is very sore and am getting a pain in the hip and down my right leg to the knee. Have had it checked out and am now taking ibuprofen and told to keep moving. Awkward to sit for very long, bit of a pain. I was looking forward to a weekend away in Devon this weekend, but have had to call it off as I can't drive for very long.

Meanwhile the story in the news yesterday was this...

Lots of snow. There were snow showers during the day yesterday and this was the view from the back bedroom window. 30cm of snow was expected yesterday night but it didn't materialise here.

Somewhere under there is my car! Today was a lot better; the sun came out and it's starting to thaw. The temperatures will drop tonight so will be very icy. Don't like the sound of that.

So yesterday I spent in hibernation. Stayed in and done some creative stuff. Above is my attempt at mixed media. This is my version of an item in Stitch magazine by Angie Hughes, but I had to improvise as I didn't have some of the items listed. The pink part is some scrim Bondawebbed onto a PVA'd calico base with strips of daisies on it. The blue bit is scrunched up tissue Bondawebbed onto the same base, with some slubby yarn zig-zagged on top. After painting some embossing powder was sprinkled on while the paint was slightly damp and I used a heat gun on that.

Also made was the BQL Calendar quilt challenge for February, with flip and sew strips. I used a variety of blue strips from my scrap bag, plus what remained of some blue bamboo print fabric that I had. I noticed that a couple of the fabrics used had frogs on, so they had to be included. So I named this little quilt "Frogs for February".

This is the back of the quilt on which I've used some of my hand-dyed fabric. I hadn't found a use for this and wouldn't use on the front of the quilt but is made ideal backing. Being virtuous and using up what fabric I've got, did it make any difference to my stash? None whatsoever!

Weekend at Richmond

DH has been working the past 2 weekends so decided to have a last minute break away. He found a country house hotel just north of Richmond, North Yorkshire. Apparently there are 57 Richmonds in the world but this is said to be the original town. On Saturday we ventured into the town and had to visit the castle It was bitterly cold, but it was dry. The pic below is the keep.

The next pic is is the great hall inside the keep, looks a bit face-like.And this pic shows the town and its market from the top of the keep. By this time we were very windswept and sooo cold. After visiting we took refuge in a tea shop!Afterward we went out of town to Richmond Station, which isn't now a station, but the Grade 2 listed building is used as shops, cafe and cinema.

Still on a train theme on Sunday we went to Shildon and the Locomotion exhibition there. It has engines that have been relocated from the National Railway Museum in York. DH has taken masses of pics and below are just a few on my own.

This one is of the engine used in the film of the Railway Children, which is undergoing restoration. Next to the engine above there looks to be the front of a miniature ship! It's actually a snow plough.And this one I could not resist and I turned off the flash to take this. As you can see there's my reflection as I had to take the picture through the window in the door of the education room. They are mosaic style pictures of modes of transport - feet, train and tram. The background looks like patchwork and were so bright and colourful. There are 2 other pictures but I could only take three through the window.

Two books and a postcard

Today I received a couple of books that I'd ordered from Amazon. I'd been wanting to get Quilt Yourself Gorgeous for a little while and when in a bookshop also glanced through Knits to Share and Care which looked good. That was some of my Christmas money spent. Going away this weekend so taking this will hopefully give me some inspiration.I was also inspired to make something from a piece of selvedge on Wednesday. In the sidebar link to Flickr there are a few postcards made with selvedges and have got a fair size bag of selvedges that I will use from time to time. The words "Kittens & Pups" were found so used some novelty fabric that I already had together with some scrap strips. The card only took an hour and a half to make. Nice and bright on what was a dull day.

DH and I are going to Richmond, North Yorkshire, this weekend as he's not working then. Hopefully should have some pics to share then.

My 2nd Blog anniversary

Hard to believe but I have been blogging for 2 years now. My blog anniversary was a couple of days ago. I started when I took up the Take A Stitch Tuesday challenge on Sharon Boggon's blog. I only got about halfway through this challenge but I do have some samples to look back on. Pictures of this are also on a Flickr site but with the blog I could describe more about what I've made. Sometimes it's been difficult to keep it updated but I figure if I could do that at least once a week it helps me doing stuff, whether its quilting, stitching or knitting, so I can record my efforts. I know that some other things like views of Dorset and later Yorkshire have crept in but I like to share some of my photos, hope that the one or two people that read this blog like them too!Hope you like my "Tete a Tete" narcissi which have come out in flower this week. I think I may have said that we have a garden in our rented house but it's just grass and a patio, nothing else. So we're keen to get some things growing in pots to try and overcome the blandness of the garden.

This week my "stuff" has consisted of putting together some disappearing nine patch blocks, which I started in Poole and has moved up with me in strips. I've put those strips together and got 2 sides of the border added on. I bought the fabric for this last February at Villavin Farm and it may look like it might be my UFO to take with me to quilt when I go there again next month.

Also my hope for this year was to get a job and I've been taken up with 2 interviews this week. One was unsuccessful, the other I'm not so sure about either, but all good experience, shows how much I need to improve my interviewing skills. Next week I have two more, the job description of one of them would really suit me very well so must pull out all the stops for that one!

The last photo shows the postcard that I received from Susan Lenz in March last year, which I'd mentioned in my previous post. It has loads of texture with a background of black velvet, chenille yarns couched with metallic thread plus more machine stitching in metallic thread.

Cyber Fiber Exhibition and New Challenge

Yesterday in Columbus, Ohio, Susan Lenz opened her Cyber Fiber exhibition and I am pleased to say that one of my postcards is exhibited there. Here's a link to the post with the picture of this and if you go to her blog here its pictured under the postcards section and mine is number 149. The are some lovely things to see, so do take a look. I realised that I hadn't posted the postcard she sent in return and as it's dark it doesn't photograph well in the artificial light, so I'll take a photo for the next posting.

I've not been idle the past few days as I've taken part in BQL's new challenge for this year which are calendar quilts. The quilts, one a month, are of 12" or A4 paper size journal type quilts and January's quilt is based on Kandinsky's circles in squares. Sixteen squares with 3 circles within circles, the fiddliest bit was tracing the circles, Bondawebbing them and sewing them to secure. Once that was done, putting the square together, quilting and binding were completed very quickly. The fabric that I've used is a colour graded fabric called Aurora which I've had in my stash for ages. One piece goes from blue to green to yellow, another from red to brown to peach, and the last piece purple to blue to green so they produced quite a variation of colour.

Last Saturday we went to a garden centre just outside Barnsley where I bought pot of hyacinth bulbs and another pot of dwarf daffodils in an effort to have a little bit of spring in the house. The house we've rented has a garden, but only a lawn so we can't grow anything, very boring. I can see that we'll be buying pots of plants this year. Here's a pic of the hyacinth in flower, lovely isn't it? The scent is rather nice too.One thing that I was dreading when moving up to the north of England was the cold weather and in particular snow, don't like the white stuff. However from what I've heard it has been colder in the south than the north and my friend Penny has e-mailed me pics of Poole Park where the lakes and the fountain have frozen. I looked at the Bournemouth Echo to find pictures of the frozen south including Sandbanks. Think I've had a lucky escape!

New Year, New Look

Hope you like the look of my blog page. After posting last time I had a play about with the template, header and other bits and at last have the header looking quite good. New Years Day found me playing about with fancy stitches on the machine as the weather was grey and murky. I found an article in Popular Patchwork by Anja Townrow using machine stitches to make a vase of flowers. I wanted to try this out in a journal A4 size and the sample was larger than that so I've drafted out to the smaller size and see how it goes.

These two photos show the recent postcards that I received but hadn't posted earlier. The one about is of Christmas trees from a swap earlier last month on Arts in the Mail. Clockwise from the top are from Rita in Canada, Leah from USA and Angela from Chippenham, UK. The one below was from a Butterfly swap which took place in June on BQL Postcards and came from Margaret. Her card was delayed due to personal circumstances and to receive her delicate looking card was worth the wait.

Today I took the Christmas decorations down, I know I should wait until Twelfth Night, but already had enough of Christmas and want to get back to normal (whatever that is). So farewell to Brett Favre (the Green Bay Packer) and his friends for now as they get packed away until next December.

Last blog of the year

Sorry to disappoint anyone visiting the blog - I've got no pics, but will update before the weekend. I arrived back from our Christmas break in Surrey yesterday. Had lots of gatherings with family and friends which was lovely, though I did have an unwelcome present - a flu virus! My brother in law and his partner had it and I got it too so one of the days was spent in bed.

Have had a brief read of blogs this afternoon and have seen that Angela and Helen on their blogs have kept a record of what they've made through the year. It's amazing the way the year has come and gone and one wonders what has happened to it, great to know that there is something to show for where that time went.

From what I can recall I know I made several postcards (of course!), 13 bags (the 12 on the BQL challenge, plus 1 made from the quilt retreat in Devon earlier this year). I'd also been involved with the International Quilting Day in March (a link here for pics) which for next year is being run by Pauline and Sarah of Pauline's Patchwork and did the admin for the Quarterjack Quilters exhibition in August. And Google says that I've also posted 56 entries on my blog this year, so I'm not one for being idle!

What I'm looking forward to in 2009? A job - I'd like to get that sorted as I would feel more settled in Yorkshire - hope that happens soon - that's the bigee! I'm also going to seek out a quilt group to join and I've found an Embroiderers' Guild group locally so hope to get in contact with people there. I've got another quilt retreat in Devon coming up in February so that's something to look forward to and I'm taking part in a 4 Seasons Quilt Swap which is due between February and March.

Wishing you all the best and happy sewing for 2009

Looking forward to Christmas

Thought I'd post my last posting before Christmas as I will be away from tomorrow until just before New Year. I am escaping from Yorkshire and going down South to stay with relatives and DH will follow early on Christmas Day. Meeting up with parents and children over the holidays, so should be a good time.

The past couple of days I've made useful bits as I'm still sorting through the plethora of stuff, knitting, stitching and other bits, since moving here as I think we may move again, be it sooner or later and just want to thin things down. I've made a roll for my knitting needles which have been in a Hobbycraft carrier bag for ages, which in the end didn't take long to plan and make, so that's one thing sorted and tidied.DH came home with a diary. I'm useless at keeping diaries as the end of the year ends up being as blank as the beginning, but each year I think it'll be useful to have one. It's black - I don't like black - so it had to have a cover. After measuring up and getting it wrong I had to make another, so here it is. The fabric is patterned so didn't embellish it with anything. I'll put that right later, but meanwhile the diary is no longer black!

The bit of needlefelting I showed in the last post I had some bits of painted Bondweb left so did another bit of needlefelting with velvet, scrim, bondaweb and organza on top, needlefelting from the front and back. Quite like this effect, discovering that the velvet base works very well.

Yesterday DH and I spent the day at the National Media Museum in Bradford, which didn't take long to get to. Yesterday was a grim and damp day so this place was good to go to as it's indoors and it's free. They had a special exhibition showing 50 years of Blue Peter. Having grown up with programme and later seeing this when the children were growing up too we had a lot of memories of this programme. So an enjoyable day. But for now I have to get ready for my trip down South.
Here's a couple of views - the top one looking from a mezzanine floor out to the Town Hall and the one below looking to the ground floor and a red Dalek!
And lastly a Christmassy pic from Leeds, where we went to look at the Christmas lights last month - a Champagne bottle underneath a street light, so it looks as though it's fizzing.

Have a

HAPPY CHRISTMAS
with best wishes from Sue

Catching up with old stuff

A couple of things have been lurking in the UFO bags. The redwork above I bought last year at The National Patchwork Championships at Sandown (think from Dandelion Designs?) and has been with me to quilt group meetings when there was no specific item to sew so has slowly been sewn. Finished off with a fabric border it looks quite good, just needs somewhere to hang.
I'd promised my daughter Sarah some cushions and I had some blocks made from ages and ages ago and put them together but didn't finish off. Checking that she still wanted them (and she did) I put that right. When I see her at Christmas I'll be able to give them to her. She has a red settee so they will go nicely.

So I've done some sewing

And embellishing too. Just to show that I haven't been out and about I have been doing things. At the Knitting & Stitching show last month I bought a n old issue of Cloth , Paper , Scissors and saw a needlefelted hanging by Beryl Taylor and decided to have a go and this is the result below.I used a piece of lilac velvet as a base with pink/purple scrim. Circles of purple felt were needled on top then painted bondaweb over that. Pieces of foil were ironed in place and felted. I edged this with strips of organza. Bit of stitching and a few buttons to finish off.
For those who like to look at the back (like I do) here it is in the pic above.
On Saturday I stayed in and pottered around because it was pouring with rain. I made a little flip and sew (or is it sew and flip?) purse for my camera (below). They look like a matching pair .

Been Out and About

Last Sunday I went to Nostell Priory, at National Trust property on the way to Wakefield. There was a craft show and secondhand book sale. The house was also open with the volunteers dressed in costume to celebrate Christmas. Children were given a challenge to collect stars for the magic wands that they found in the rooms. This pic above was the house. It was a cold but sunny day so a good day for a walk so long as one was well wrapped up.

This was the statue in the rose garden.
Outside the gift shop there were some metal doormats for sale. I could not resist taking a picture of this.
On Wednesday I took myself in the other direction, towards Doncaster. On the outskirts of the town is Cusworth House, which is run by the local council. The house was sold to then by the last remaining member of the family that owned this back in the 1980's. There has been a lot of work done to the building. Inside there is an exhibition of Quintin Blakes pictures from the Roald Dahl books. Not sure if pictures could be taken I didn't take any, but took a pic of the house, above.
And of the stables, which houses the coffee shop with a lovely collection of tea pots. Being mid week and again very cold the place seemed deserted.

Whilst in Doncaster I went to The Range. I saw this pink fluffy Christmas tree, together with other pink things around it - whatever next! But I could not resist taking a photo.We've also put our Christmas tree up. A fibre optic one in black (though we hadn't realised it was black until after we bought it a few years back). The bottom branches are little weak now and drooping a bit. So it may be it's last Christmas - ahhh.

Yet another bag!

Hot on the heels on the November bag in my last post is the December bag - this was finished yesterday (4 December). I had all the bits from my stash, nothing extra to get so just got on with it.

Doesn't look too bad, does it? If you click on the Flickr site on the side bar I'll have pics of all my bags from the BQL bag challenge on there.

Anyway with the awful weather - very icy on Wednesday then snow on Thursday (though it disappeared really quickly) they were days to potter around. As well as the bag making I also had a bash at making felt. I've made needlefelt with the embellisher, but in Sew Hip magazine there was an article about making wet felt. So again I already had stuff on hand so here goes..I had some roving (which a friend gave me a from her spinning days) in 4 layers going across and down laid in a baking tray.The above pic shows the soapy wetted roving (very squishy). This had to be pushed into the tin until the fibres held together. The felt was then placed onto bubblewrap and rolled up and thoroughly kneeded.This shows the felt drying on teatowels, you can see that I also made a cream piece. The felt dried overnight and I was surprised that it didn't take that long to do. I may have a go at felting the some of the pieces I've needlefelted and see what difference it makes to the fibres.

This Saturday will see DH and I going to York. I got a new camera last weekend (which took the above photo's) - a dinky little thing in purple (just my colour). So we'll put it through it's paces there. Hope I'll have some photo's to share.